Au Cochonnet Marin

I take my kids everywhere, but they always find their way back home. Robert Orben

I am aware that due to the “Shelter in place” policy, some people are getting bored out of their minds. Fortunately, there is a sure-fire antidote to remedy this problem. And best of all, it is readily available to all.

If you are wallowing in such a miserable state, the cure is staring you in the face. To eradicate this mind-numbing boredom, just propose to friends or family to shelter their 5-year-old kid for a week.  Half a dozen kids will be dropped at your front door thirty seconds after you have made this offer.

A kid this age needs constant entertainment and I guarantee that for the duration of his/her stay you won’t be bored a single minute. And as a bonus, you will also sleep like a log. At the end of the day, you will be so exhausted that you will collapse on your bed and fall asleep instantly. Absolutely no medication needed.

To keep the kid in fighting shape, you will also need to exercise him. You might discover that you are not as fit as you thought you were. The kid will still be darting right and left while you will be panting on a bench…

You might have dealt professionally with a full-grown diva before, but this experience won’t prepare you for dealing with a miniature prima donna. You will need to be extremely flexible and creative to accommodate his wishes.

Divas throw occasional tantrums, but kids having more energy, are likely to regale you with at least one tantrum a day. And the only way to deal with such “garnements” is to bribe them into submission.

Kids are also known in French as “touche-à-tout” (touch everything) and you will have to secure every valuable item (including your stash of weed) in your house before their scheduled blitz.

Since their minds are not yet cluttered with a lot of conservative junk, kids have elephants’ memory. They remember everything they hear (even what they are not supposed to catch). So, when you are tempted to let go with a salvo of colorful expletives,  exercise great caution over what comes out of your mouth.

I hate to say it…

But kids are also lovable… especially at bedtime.
As a friend of mine once said: “the only reason you don’t strangle them all is that are so damn lovable.”

And they are cuddlers! When you are ready to throw them in a dungeon, they cuddle! The nerves of those rascals!
Who in hell can resist a cuddle? Not me.  I am too much of a soft touch.

Alain

Help, au secours… It seems that I don’t understand French Computerese… Is it an unknown symptom of Covid-19? Like losing your sense of taste? I feel very uneasy about this…

As you probably know, a language has many different facets. The spoken form, for instance, can be quite different from the written form… and in my case, even though I speak French, I struggle to understand French Computerese…

Computerese is a fairly recent language that was born (I believe) in America. Being an early fan of the computer brotherhood, I embraced Computerese at its dawn. But speaking English Computerese does not necessarily mean understanding French Computerese.

French is far more verbose than English, and it often takes twice the amount of words to express the same idea. So, a simple Anglo word can morph in a quaint French expression that is understood only by French insiders… and I am not one of those.

A few days ago, a  friend asked me to replace her Facebook password. It seems that Facebook does not like you to mess with this area and it does not make the process easy. And this routine becomes even more challenging under unusual conditions.

My friend is using a PC running on MS Windows… in French…  these two combined factors added to my perplexity.

Originally, when I started working in the US, everybody used computers running on the Microsoft architecture and so did I. After a while, I became fairly knowledgeable about PC Computerese.

But later on, tired of the increasingly frequent Microsoft updates, I switched to an Apple computer and started losing touch with the Windows world.

When you are not familiar with it, navigating Windows 10, in French, can be intimidating. It is a little bit like speaking French with a Haitian.

To make a long story short, I finally got the job done, but I am not sure that I can still speak French. To reassure myself, I will try to sing the first bars of La Marseillaise…

Allons enfants de la patrie,
Le jour de gloire est arrivé…

 So far, so good… I might live after all…

Regardless how bored you are, listen to Uncle Alain, and remain socially distant for a while longer!

Alain

The phone virus (or Phovid-20) is way more potent and vicious than Covid-19. And very few people are aware of this!

Long after the coronavirus is defeated, Phovid-20 will continue to thrive and spread havoc. I daresay that it will outlast the effects of Covid-19 by decades.

So far, young children seem to be partially immune to this dreadful disease; but in First Grade, after mingling with their peers, they are very likely to become infected… and parents will do anything to soothe their sufferings.

Phovid-20 is more dangerous than Covid-19 because it has sex-appeal, and it is highly addictive. It is like cocaine. The victims know that the stuff is bad for them, but they still crave it.

“We get one of these little pings on our smartphones, and we get a little hit of dopamine as well. We get excited. We feel anticipation. As we feel this, we want it more and more. So we spend more and more time looking at our phones.” ~ Kim Stolz

 I have been documenting this phenomenon for the last 6 months and I have the photos to prove my assertions. Spending time in cafés is one of my “péchés mignons” (guilty pleasures) and while seemingly slurping some Java, I have been snapping pictures of the addicts. And none of them by the way, are observing “social distancing.”

My photos will prove irrefutably, that at least 80 % of the population is already infected, and I am afraid that my wife is part of that group. Authorities (who are aware of this disease) have been slow to react. They don’t want to panic the public at large and hurt the Dow Jones Industrial Average, but they are clearly worried.

Some pro-business politicos have been talking about using Lysol to prevent the spread of Phovid-20, but scientists remain doubtful. A vaccine will have to be created and tested before the public is allowed to use it.

“The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.” ~ Alain de Botton

 This is a tough one! How can you possibly compete with a know-it-all smart aleck? And to make it worse, the carrier of Phovid-20 is warm and cuddly. People like to touch it, to fondle it, to kiss it… They even sleep with it…

Recommendation

As I told you before, it is going to be a tough struggle. Detox centers will flourish but with no real guarantee of success.

If you are interested (and probably worried) about this development, click on “my photos” to look at the evidence.

Alain